Broken Lands Act II, Orcs on a Mission - Updated 12-Sep-06

Gorga, a young Orc who has been training with the scouts and hunters of the tribe. His wilderness knowledge and skills mark him well as a future leader within the tribe, if he can survive the rivalries he will engender in the tribe.

Gaak half brother to Iirkh, is a full-blooded Ogre who actually has the intelligence and wisdom to be a force to reckon with in the tribe. He has been training hard as a fighter with a specific goal in mind.

Tuukar tracker and hunter with the Vile Runes tribe, set out to join up with the Wyverns to increase his standing and glory in the horde.

NPC's

Nachip was an initiate shaman in the Vile Runes tribe. The Wyverns recruited him, on a stop at the tribe, and he has called upon the spirits to the benefits of the Wyverns.

Grall is a Gnoll from east of the kobold lands, he offered service, after hearing tales of power and conquest at the knee of the Battle Drummer Drigka

Haggrekk is a Bugbear hired on by the warband, after watching him fight in the pits at the Sacred Caverns. He won, barely, but with a certain viciousness that was appreciated by the warband

Troll Stomping Fun, Oh Yeah

DM Notation: I am starting this up, to get caught up with the current story in the Broken Lands. I do not have recent game session outlines, and no quotes to go with them. I am far enough behind that restarting writing is becoming a problem. I’m hoping that starting from a current point in time will renew my desire to finish the back story, and fill them in.

I hope you enjoy,
GW

Summary of Current Actions

The warband has decided to travel into Troll lands, to retrieve the sword called “OgreBreaker”. Gaak does not want such a weapon of legendary name to fall into the hands of anyone who might come hunting for him. Better to keep such a weapon close than have it come hunting from afar. Gorga still leads this warband, but with the members of the warband proving to be powerful in their own ways, the warband acts more as a Council of elders at times, with Gorga as the ChairOrc heading it. The warband is comprised of: Gorga, Gaak, Tuukar, Darkhunt, Nachip, Grall, and Haggrekk. There are also 5 Hobgoblins pressed into service through the convincing of Tuukar, and about 20 Obsidian Orcs from the lands of Orcus Rex led by Gorga, are met here. Others have come and gone from the warband, but these few continue toward the goal of one day ruling the Broken Lands, and with that power, lands beyond.

Troll Stomping Fun, Oh Yeah – 28-Apr-2006

The Wyvern’s are traveling North by Northwest along an old caravan road, linking the lands of Darokin to the South, and the Principalities of Glantri to the North. The caravan route is often the site of humanoid ambushes, and only the bravest and best defended caravans attempt to traverse the Broken Lands in search of profit. The route skirts the Eastern edge of a large swampy valley in the heart of Troll territory. Surrounding the valley are mountains and rolling hills, which give it more of a festering wound appearance from a birds-eye view. In the Mountains South of the valley, the Wyverns make their way cautiously along the dirty and rocky path. Near the time of High sun, the warband hears the sounds of battle over a hill near the caravan route. Looking for a chance at combat, they move quickly and silently to investigate. Peering through the scrub trees and bushes, Gorga and Darkhunt see a Huge Chimera that is having trouble with his lunch. It is trying to eat 3 trolls, and while eating one, another gets up to attack, and continue the fight. Gorga gathers the warband, and the group of Hobgoblin fighters led by Tuukar.

Using skills honed in the crucible of battle, Gorga directs the warband to best place them, in the outcome that both sides in the battle will need to be fought. Gaak and Haggrekk will sneak around to the North of the Chimera. The hobgoblins, Tuukar, Grall and Nachip will wait at the SE edge of the clearing, all except Nachip waiting to fill either combatant with arrows. Gorga and Darkhunt will approach the fight for parley, to see which side would like help in the battle. Things almost unfold in their intended manner. The goat head sees Gaak and Haggrekk and the Dragon head bites and holds a troll, while watching as Gorga and Darkhunt approach. The troll is not quite dead, and is fighting to be released from the dragon maw. Grall is anxious to attack, and Gorga waves him off for a bit. Gaak gets to the North of the Chimera, and cuts up one of the trolls that was trying to crawl away. A cave is down a short path beyond the Chimera, but it looks too small to have been a home to this huge creature.

Calling out in Draconic, Gorga puts some humility in his voice “Oh great Dragon, may we assist you in your fight with the nasty trolls, and help you to heal? I see the fight has gone long and you are injured.”

The Chimera stares with two baleful eyes at Gorga. The goat head is carefully watching the progress of Gaak and Haggrekk, while the lion head peers cautiously around for any other intrusions. With no response from the Chimera, Gorga decides to attack. What Gorga failed to recognize, was that the Chimera was playing with his food. The Chimera was waiting, and disgorges his flaming breath, charring the troll in his mouth. Gorga and Darkhunt are able to avoid most of the fire, but are both burned as they charge. Darkhunt bites deeply, but is unable to trip the huge creature, and Gorga slashes with his Bastard sword as they ride by. Deepening the injuries already suffered at the hands of the trolls. (1)

Not sure who is the real enemy, Grall shoots a troll in the back of the head with his new composite longbow, presented courtesy of Tuukar. The hobgoblins all miss, and Tuukar hits the Chimera with a few arrows. “No Grall, shoot the big dragon.”

Feeling sufficiently injured, the Chimera attempts to leap into flight, to flee the new battle. Gorga and Darkhunt charge back through injuring the creature yet again, laughing and whooping at the death they can both smell. A few sweeps of his powerful wings, and the creature is airborne, only to be brought down shortly by the arrows of Tuukar, and the final arrow of Grall, who claims the kill as his own. In his simple mind his arrow killed the creature. The Trolls are dispatched and burned as their bodies attempt to regrow lost body parts, and the troll cave found. No Troll cave is complete, without everything being dung-covered.

A couple rings, the armor, dagger, wand, and rod, all are magical according to Nachip and his spirit-given magic detection spell.
Easy pickings it turned out. None were identified before curing the Chimera meat, collecting spell components for sale, and moving on.

After another Boar (2) on the caravan route, with Tuukar scouting ahead, he hears the cries of battle. Some 200 knucks (3) ahead, a large number, nearly 100 dead orcs surround a couple of dead horses, and a Human wizard at the side of his fallen comrade. Arrows bounce off of some form of magic field around him. Tuukar mentions back to Gorga. “Gorga, hold, wizard battle ahead.”

Tuukar sneaks, and hides quite handily around the battle, counting nearly 20 Orcs left alive in the conflict. The wizard calls out for healing magic, or he will lay waste to the rest of the Orcs. He gets the expected response, when arrows bounce off his magical barrier. He seems to talk with something nearby, and Tuukar can tell there is some form of invisible creature with the wizard as well. While Tuukar is sneaking behind the Wizard, a couple fireballs go off, and he changes wands to a lightning wand, injuring more of the Orcs. Then another call for magical healing, and the wizard takes out a scroll, reads it, while touching his fallen friend, and promptly disappears.

Tuukar calls up Gorga and the warband. They meet up with some Orcs from Orcus Rex, a land up North, their leader has been killed. They have heard of the Wyverns, and agree to follow them. As fame and treasure seem to surely follow any who join the Wyverns.

The bodies of the nearly 5 score Orcs are brought to the West side of the road, past an embankment, and left for the scavengers. Their bodies are looted by the remaining Orcs of the small tribe. Camp is made, and 4 injured Orcs healed, and healed more through the night by Nachip. The highest ranking remaining Orc tells of a visit to the Troll Temple, and some of the security measures around it.

Using the most powerful title he thinks is possible, the Orc begins.“War leader Gorga. Our old tribe leader got a message from the Trolls. It was a scroll closed with a black wax seal with a picture of some chicken-headed thing. He saw no harm in opening it. It was written by trolls, but in Orcish. I read it to Dramger.

“Come to the Temple of Afnar and have no fear, you will not be attacked. Bring as many of your Orcs as you like, but come soon. As a token of our good will, please accept this gift.”

There was a map showing the caravan route South, and the road into the swamp to the Temple. Dramger thought about it for a few days, and decided to take a chance. There was bunches of trolls heading South, and they was glad to help us find our way. We walked right up to this temple. Quite a big thing of earth and stone. Dramger went in, and when he come out, we all left, quick, but we turned South instead of North, and met them wizards.”(4)

Gorga formulates a plan to attack the temple in the swamp, with poor avenues of attack, the main path up to it, is decided upon. The Orc and hobgoblin archers will follow up and target an area for anything in it. (5) The warband will approach while Gorga attempts to feign a parley to see the temple. Storm clouds can be seen gathering overhead, filled with flickers of lightning, and a swirling that seems to be centered over the temple.

It works mostly, but the Troll guards, become suspicious of the small army of Orcs approaching up the road. After a shouting match between a Troll guard, and Gorga, who will not halt his warriors, Gorga, mounted on Darkhunt, charges into battle. Between the two of them, the Troll is badly injured, and tripped to the ground, by the large Worg as she charges past. Nachip sees the potential for trouble, and calls upon his spirits for a spell to enlarge Gaak, allowing him to grow to a huge size. The slaughter commences. Tuukar snipes his arrows in from a distance, dealing heavy damage. Gaak Cleaves through Trolls with his Huge flaming greataxe, Darkhunt mauls and trips up trolls, as Gorga slashes with his Magic flaming Scimitar trophy from the Druid. The Orcs and Hobgoblins do some damage with a rain of arrows. Only one Troll out of 8 escapes into the temple, and Gorga calls for the Orcs and Hobgoblins to rush forward to stoke up the fires left in the guard houses. Gaak looks around at the chopped up hunks of troll, trying to regenerate, and says. "Burn the Trash"

Notes

(1) I made 2 mistakes here. The first of which was allowing the charge to happen as it did. Looked up the rules on ride-by-attack. The second was allowing Gorga/Darkhunt to get the first attack, before the Chimera moved. He had a readied action that went off before Gorga/Darkhunt were able to complete their charge. That put him just ahead in the initiative order. Not as if he wouldn't have been brought down, but he had a greater chance of escaping at least, or finding better targets for his attacks closer to the edge of the clearing.) Mounted Combat Links on Wizards

(2) Boar – Measure of time it takes to skin a boar, about one hour. Spits are also used as a measure of time. A boar on a spit is turned over a fire 6 times in about a minute. So a spit is ten seconds.

(3) Knucks are equivalent to feet, Ogre Knuckles as a unit of measure

(4) Paraphrased from the Temple of the Troll God, by Fast Forward Entertainment.

(5) The Orcs and Hobgoblins are using a rule from the Hero’s of Battle book from Wizards. They target a 5 foot square and do a certain amount of damage, minus a reflex save. This kept us from rolling d20 for each of the Orcs and Hobgoblins

I do hope you can fill in the back story at some point - even just in brief summary form! I can quite understand the urge to leap forward to where you're comfortable writing again (hey, if it's good enough for Sepulchrave and Piratecat ... ) but I would certainly like to find out what's happened to the old warband members.

I do hope you can fill in the back story at some point - even just in brief summary form! I can quite understand the urge to leap forward to where you're comfortable writing again (hey, if it's good enough for Sepulchrave and Piratecat ... ) but I would certainly like to find out what's happened to the old warband members.

In the meantime, I look forward to the Wyverns' new adventures.

Thanks, I do intend to fill in what has happened in the old thread. I have all the outlines, and notes, and quotes from those sessions. I just don't want to lose what we aren't currently documenting. And I'm finding a renewed desire to write up current events, and the players are enjoying reading about what their characters have just done.

See you here soon, I have 2 more updates written, and am working on two more that get us right up to where the Warband is now. Knee deep in Troll Temple, and Troll Bodies.

GW

The current sessions are modified from the Troll Temple book by FastForward Entertainment. Written for V.3.0 with some wierdness I had to modify on the fly, and some encounter enhancements thrown in. Gorga almost died last session and Tuukar, a new character, cursed. Let's just say Trolls with Cleric Levels can put a hurtin on you. Hairy Minotaur used different parts of the same module in some past encounters in his story hour.

Awesome! G-ELM is back , sorry I missed the first post, I was subscribed to the later SH.

Anyway, are you going to use the "alarms" as is or modify it? I find that "encounter" to be the most evocative in the temple. The tortured goblins come in a close second.

I posted a link in the old SH thread to point people here, sorry you missed it.

They will find the alarms this session, and I do not plan on altering them, I expect 1 big battle for the whole level, with the open floorplan, and the way these guys are mowing through trolls at this point. The goblins, couple of encouters were fun to read, let's just say that the warband will have access to more new allies soon.

The ogre child .. Gaak was a bit peeved at that. I have that update written as well, it is the one between I am working on now, so the next 3 will be done. I want to keep a small buffer for any weeks I can't get an update out, and I really want to finish this one before the game tomorrow night, so I can start right into getting that update written.

My wife is recovering pretty well, and I have time to myself again. Woo Hoo. See you all here Friday for the next update.

Wakey, Wakey, Trolls and Bakey – 12 and 26-May-2006

Wakey, Wakey, Trolls and Bakey – 12 and 26-May-2006

With all the Troll guards dead and being burned by the Orcs, or having fled to raise the alarm, the warband is able to walk right up to the huge solid rock and earth structure. It looks as if it was carved from a small mountainous outcropping of rock here in the swamp. Up higher on the Temple, large arrow slits can be seen. None seem to be manned, or trolled for that matter. The main doors are fashioned from enormous planks cut from a twisted swamp oak, all banded together with thick iron straps. Enormous branches still grow from the wood here and there, as the wood refuses to die. (1) The doors are nearly 8 knucks wide and 15 knucks tall each. (2)

Gaak, using his enchanted greataxe, chops his way through the steel-banded swamp oaks, in little more than 2 spits. (3) The greataxe was purchased at great expense from a greasy little orc at the Sacred Caverns. But what price can you put on chopping your enemies open with the added ease of an enchanted axe blade?

The warband is met at the door by 2 guards, and a large temple full of trolls, black candles flickering in candleholders around the grand hall give the room a disturbing array of shadows. Most of the Trolls are in a trance, rocking back and forth, and praying to their god. The priests are in a trance of some sort as well, leading the prayer to the image of their god, dug into the North wall of the room. In addition to the chanting of the trolls, drums can be heard, and much shouting, and fighting coming from nearby rooms.

Tuukar signals Saar to fly around and scout the area. The great eagle leaves perch on a nearby tree to follow the commands.

Grall steps up and injures a troll guard, with a crushing pair of blows from his heavy flail, and is quickly slashed by both guards for his trouble. Gaak levels a troll, chopping through him into the next troll guard. Tuukar manages to shoot a few arrows into a troll for significant damage.

Quickly Gorga determines that with Gaak fighting in the doorway, and Troll bodies falling to block entry that someone needs to start dragging the bodies out to be burned on the bonfire. The Orc and Hobgoblin troops have started up a large fire between the guard posts. At the direction of Gorga and Tuukar, their followers have begun dismantling the guard posts for fueling the fire. . Gorga gives orders to Grall and Haggrekk to keep trolls from getting back up to reengage the warband.

You, Grall and Haggrekk, drag bodies and parts back to the fire to be burned, we will keep hacking them down.

Some of the bodies are still struggling to grow back together. With them out of the way, Gorga sees that the majority of the trolls are in a trance and take no notice of the chopped-in doors, and warband outside. One of the priests begins to come out of his self-induced fog, and sees the invasion to the temple. He begins to exhort the followers to rise up and defend the Grand Hall of Afnar.

Gorga, the only Worg Champion of the Blood Orcs lands, rides his Worg companion in to attack one of the guards, further in the main hall. Nachip calls upon a spirit of predators to instill Gaak with the grace of a cat. Gaak wades into the crowd of Trolls, swinging his axe like a scythe at the Trolls who seem aware of what is going on. A random hit on one that is still entranced, helps bring it around, and into the fight. Darkhunt and Gorga team up to badly injure a troll petitioner, and trip it to the ground. When it tries to get up, Gaak still enlarged and graceful is able to send it back to the ground in pieces. While back at the tribe he gained some training in making attacks when the opportunity arises in combat, and is reaping a payoff in trolls.

Throughout the battle trolls come out of their trance to engage the warband, who have evolved into efficient killing machines. Gorga and Darkhunt team up to injure trolls, and take them to the ground, while Gaak cleaves through troll after troll, as they attempt to move up to engage him. The few, who make it through, do not stand long against the huge flaming greataxe swung by the Ogre. Grall and Haggrekk carry bodies and parts out to the waiting Orcs and Hobgoblins, and their growing bonfire. Trolls parts are burned thoroughly to ensure the inability to regenerate. Nachip, unable to take part directly in battle, spends time healing Gaak of his most painful wounds.

Late in the battle, a priest escapes out one of the archways to the right side. It brings reinforcements in the form of 3 more priests, but most are soon killed, even after casting Doom, and holding Gorga motionless with the fell power of their god. Gorga is able to shake it off, and the same spell cast by the other priests is unable to overcome his will. The remaining priest flees out the far end of the room.

In a room off of the main hall, a group of quarreling trolls break off the fight to join their brethren in battle. These few do not stand long against the combined might of the Wyverns. Soon the warband drags out the rest of the bodies, and begins searching the grand hall, and the nearby chambers.

In a few short minutes, the room is cleared of all troll pieces, and the bonfire gives off the stench of cooking troll meat. The sounds of drums and shouting can be heard from a room farther on into the temple. Shrinking down to normal size, Gaak can feel the magical enhancements slowly fading after the battle. The warband and some of the Obsidian Orcs begin searching and securing the Grand Hall. Another victory for the Wyverns can now be counted. All totaled: 15 Trolls, 4 Troll priests, 5 Troll guards.

The main hall is quite large, nearly 60 knucks, by 130 knucks in size. Four archways lead to other areas of the main floor. Candles still flicker and burn around the room, and the image of Afnar carved into the North wall, stares balefully at everyone in the room. Investigating the sounds of Drumming and shouting coming from the Northwest archway, an Obsidian Orc sees eight trolls, and some kind of large winged-troll. A couple of them are pounding on drums made of skulls, bones, and skin. The rest seem to be playing some kind of game. Stepping quietly back, he rushes to tell Gorga of his discovery.

Notes

(1) Paraphrased from the Temple of the Troll God, by Fast Forward Entertainment.

(2) Knucks are equivalent to feet, Ogre Knuckles as a unit of measure

(3) Spit –Spits are used as a measure of time. A boar on a spit is turned over a fire 6 times in about a minute. So a spit is ten seconds.

One of our players fitz submitted a background for a character that he will be trying out fairly soon. He currently plays Tuukar. He wrote the update, so that if fits right in along the lines of the story hour, which will help to explain his appearance in the next few updates.

There will be some changes with the warband again, with their growing power, prestige, and some of the players will be looking at trying out some new character types. None of the current characters are planned for complete retirement. One of the reasons we started this game, was to try out new things. I hope you enjoy.